Tag Archives: shoe tossing

Lame Adventure 305: Look up in the Sky!

It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!

Lamppost at 79th and Broadway on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Allow me to defog my glasses …

Are these things going to break loose, fall on my head and knock sense into me?

It’s shoes hanging over a lamppost!

I have a correction to make to my previous post where I shared the trauma of suffering my latest birthday.  When I mentioned that my sister, Dovima, gifted me with a box of See’s dark chocolate, I had not yet opened the box and unbeknownst to me, my x-ray vision was malfunctioning.  Yes, I was assuming there was dark chocolate within, and indeed there was dark chocolate within, but the dark chocolate within was See’s Almond Royals, dark chocolate caramels wrapped around large pieces of almond.  Why am I compelled to mention this?

This is the dark chocolate equivalent of heroin.

Once I start eating them, I need another fix fast.  These buttery sugar bombs are also instant dental death prompting me to invest in a new toothbrush.  While walking up Broadway to do toothbrush shopping, I noticed the hanging sneakers.

Last month I published posts about tree bagging – shopping bags that somehow wind up tangled in the branches of a tree on my block.  Trash in trees is not symbolic of much other than The Big Apple has so much garbage, it can even be found in the trees.

Bag 1 continuing to make itself at home, “The view is outstanding from up here!”

Bag 2 hanging around, “I like this neighborhood. I feel secure in this tree.”

Shoe tossing is an altogether other kind of statement.  Since I’m such a brilliant researcher and I know that the vast majority of you, my nine subscribers, visit this site purely for its vast educational component, I Googled “shoe tossing”.   My results led me straight to Wikipedia.

Apparently shoe tossing is also known as shoe flinging or shoefiti.  It can mean many things including the end of the school year, an upcoming marriage, a practical joke played on someone plastered, someone moving onto bigger and better things, a bullying tactic, an ad that crack and cocaine are sold here (the sneakers can be referred to as “Crack Tennies”), a sign of gang turf, a commemoration of a gang-related murder, etc.

My favorite explanation on Wikipedia is this one:

“Of course, only each individual shoe-thrower knows why his/her pair of shoes now hangs from a wire.”

Manhattan’s Upper West Side can be so banal; one of my long ago acquaintances referred to my ‘hood as being:

Long Ago Acquaintance:  “As dull as Encino.”

Therefore those shoes hanging over that lamppost could simply mean that some chocolate smeared weasel just purchased a new toothbrush.

Unlikely couple — See’s Almond Royals and new toothbrush.

For the record, my sneaker of choice is the Jack Purcell badminton shoe – and I would never wear anything as hideous as those gunboats hanging from that lamppost.

Preferred gunboats not destined for a lamppost.